The first night of a festival has a first date feel to it. Tentative, quietly anxious, bit of a jitter. There's so much expected but it's far too early to give that hopeful anticipation form. And so it is on a Tuesday night at Dante's in early September as a milling smatter of punters trickle in for MFNW's first rock'n'roll show (there's a hip hop showcase up the street at Roseland headlined by Joey Bada$$). We await Portland band Summer Cannibals, who from what I've heard, define the word 'promising,' we await Black Bananas, the latest vehicle for raggedly invincible crusher doll Jennifer Herrema, ex-Royal Trux. And, we await Redd Kross, the band that refused to die, an initial stint spanning 17 years (1980-97) before reforming in 2004 and continuing to refuse to give up, or, for that matter, even grow up. In essence the same pop-punk rocker kids they were when they first emerged, we're here tonight to see how that's holding up. But first the Summer Cannibals.
(oh and by the way we all know its been a monkey summer lately and Dante's is already beginning to earn its name)
Summer Cannibals are immediately, well, rather dangerously good, a Dum Dum Breeders indie melodic drive, singer-guitarist Jessica Boudreaux and guitarist-singer mark Swart trading guitar power runs and sharing some whoa oh oh vocals. Mostly though, this is Boudreaux's show, she's got a tear-it-up, hard/soft rock chick persona it's hard not to focus on.
As a decade, the 90's seemed to leave us with a lot unsaid. Summer Cannibals aren't the first I've seen/heard lately that's intent on redressing that balance, just one of the best. Fifth song in they even hit a chunky blues grunge sweet spot (rough spot?) that would do Jon Spencer proud. Fred Armisen as well, I should imagine, the 90's alive and well in, well, Portland.
Okay, confession: I was never much of a Royal Trux fan. Heroin chic turned on its head? Cool, I suppose, but the shambolic, falling-down-the-stairs nature of it put me off. Jennifer Herrema seems a Nico for our ages, less classically trained, more self-indulgent mess. But, I'm more than willing to let bygones be bygones and give the disheveled queen of chaos a chance.
Well, with the help of a head-bowed, lank haired wizard of a guitarist and a keyboard laptop magician, she manages to sound pretty good inside that context. Her singing, however, is virtually buried and certainly unintelligible, as is her between song patter. Sadly, what she reminds me of is Patti Smith if she'd found heroin instead of Rimbaud. Her bandmates, however, are ace, crack accompanists that bravely hold up each side of the stage while Ms. Herrema gamely caterwauls in between them. At one point a dirty funk is reached for (as are earplugs) and it may very well be reached but if so, so far as the singer is concerned, it's a lucky grab. But hey, again, the two-man band? Superb.
Well, yeah, we're packed in here now, as well we should be. I've bounced into friends we're all hyped up and ready to bang shoulders together
So we start with a squall,.a playful, kinda quiet one but a squall. But within seconds we're in pop-punk city and it doesn't have to go very far before this formulation of occurs: Slade doing Buzzcocks. It's an equation that won't leave me the rest of the night. Weird thing? They're not, of course, British, but hail from sunny, cementy Hawthorne, California and wear the hippie tresses to prove it. With that in mind, come to think of it, power pop skate punk may also well suffice.
Without a doubt a heritage band, of sorts, but the thing is there's just too much of a sharp (though non-threatening) edge to them to ever end up at Spirit Mountain. They especially escape falling into such a fate since they're, y'know, still putting out new material though in truth it doesn't very wildly from what made their reputation in the first place over 30 years ago. The slightly cartoonish image their music portends, that initially made me shy away all those years ago, is actually they're most enduring charm. You don't come to a Red Cross show looking for enlightenment, you come for a rockin punkish good time and you most certainly get it, in spades, in surges, from the rafters to the soles of your feet. In the end, respect.
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